If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Influence Wars - Japan 1936 HPP Interactive AAR - GAMEPLAY THREAD

Permission to open this thread was given by Qorten*This is a gameplay thread. ONLY the AAR manager [me] and the AAR players may post here. Comments may be made here: Comment Thread*

The Introduction

Greetings, Gentlemen.

Let me being this meeting by expressing my concern over the state of the Empire. Several years ago, when a single incident caused the explosion of violence in Manchuria, I was told that the invasion would help the Empire to achieve self-sufficiency and improve the Empire's position against China. However, according to the latest economic report, the reality is very different.

Apparently, the Japanese industry is still hampered by lack of critical rare materials and the stockpiles of strategic resources are not big enough to allow further industrial expansion. Moreover, I am being told that we are still dependant on the imports of oil from the United States of America, which not only weakens our position, but also strains the budget.

In the light of this report, how can the Empire's influence in China be increased if the Americans are able to stop exporting oil to us should we become too aggressive? This is also the matter of national security - will we be able to stop Chiang when he deals with the communist rebels and tries to take Manchuria and Korea by force? After all, we cannot be sure how the Americans will react to such turn of events. I am very interested to hear what my best officers have to say about this matter.

Before you answer, let me elaborate further on the way I perceive the Empire's situation. While I have no doubt that most people are loyal to the Empire, I hear that the current government is very unpopular. This is not the first government that have problems with maintaining stability. This cannot be tolerated. Stability of the Empire must be maintained.

When we consider our geopolitical situation, the Empire is surrounded by potential enemies, ranging from China to the Soviet Union. The relations with the western powers are also cold and have been gradually deteriorating since the previously mentioned invasion of Manchuria. Our country is isolated, which means that stability and self-sufficiency are matters of utmost importance. They will have to be achieved by coordination of political, diplomatic and intelligence efforts. It is also my will to hear your opinions about this issue.

I have to mention the fact that the western countries still do not consider us to be their equals. This is something which I and many Emperors before me have been trying to remedy for years. Unfortunately, the increasing isolation does not bode well for the future. In fact, it encourages conflict, which is worrisome. This brings me to specific matters concerning the Army and the Navy.

If we acknowledge that the Empire's isolation and international standing will inevitably lead to conflict, a strong military will be the key to our success. The Army has been greatly expanded over the years, but I think that much more will need to be done if we are to face the Soviets or the Americans. Therefore, I direct my question to the Army officers - which direction should we take in order to ensure successful development of our forces? What are your thoughts on army reorganisation?

Since we cannot defend our possessions and project our power without naval supremacy, I have no doubt that the Navy will play an important role in any future conflict. As we all know, the continued expansion of our naval industry consumes many resources and is a very long process. In fact, several new warships are currently under construction. I want to hear it from the officers of the Imperial Navy - what are your thoughts about the current and future naval developments? How do you evaluate our chances in a potential conflict with the western powers?

Another matter I would like to bring to your attention is the expansion of our aircraft industry. I have been hearing that the effectiveness and importance of the air-power are constantly increasing. Therefore, I want to hear your opinions about the role of air-power in the future conflicts.

It came to my attention that the infrastructure in our overseas possessions has much to be desired. If that is so, it is possible that it will hamper our efforts aimed at improving our position on the Asian mainland. I want to hear your thoughts about this issue and evaluate possible solutions to the problem.

Finally, it should come to no surprise to you that I will inquire about homeland defence. Are you confident that we will be able to defend the Empire against the most probable threats in the following years? If you have any doubts, what do you think needs to be improved?

You may now speak.

---------
*Since this is the first post, I will clarify several things:
- the players are supposed to consult each other when necessary, create plans and discuss them among themselves; each faction should present one final plan approved by all mini-factions of a given major faction, which should be designated with bolded words "FINAL PLAN", written in capital letters; preferably, the whole process shouldn't take more than 5-6 days
- during peace-time, plans are supposed to cover a period of at least six months
- during war-time, plans are supposed to cover a period of at least one month, although their various elements can be more detailed or more general
- more comprehensive plans have higher chance of gaining more influence for the given faction; this is de facto your best chance of convincing me to do sth
- the Army can choose its doctrine path, but the Navy can make suggestions
- I will evaluate the plans, approve them and determine the influence level of both factions in regard to IC/MP/LP etc. in a single post; keep in mind that the total influence of a given faction will not be lower than 25%
- after that, I will execute the plans and post the first chapter
- minimal roleplaying is expected during staff meetings, but your posts should be first and foremost informative
- you can consult each other by PMs if you think that it will help you to coordinate your actions, but major points and plans should be made in this thread, as I will not assign influence levels based on outside sources
- readers are not supposed to post in this thread; comments should be made in the Comment Thread

My Empore, As we can see, we have some Mongolian lands in china, and we could cause a revolt to get them to break way and support us, But the Chinese could go to war over this... As far as I see, The Soviet Union could be tasty if Germany helps us, but for now we need to focus south into China, A mess of competing warlords, then come up with a plan to destroy the foul beast!

The Doctrines we must go with are, Infantry Support role for Tanks, Blitzkrieg for Operational, and Firepower Focus for Infantry

I advise researching of better infantry support tanks and artillery, but My Commander, Surt can give the final option on this.

Comm Cody on some forums, 2nd_Lt_Cody on others, and Pvt. Adams [2RB] or 2nd_Lt_Cody on steam.
I know nothing, I see nothing, I hear nothing!

My Emperor! It is clear to me that there lies but one path to achieving glory for Japan!

We must focus our strength in aircraft carriers, and the planes that operate of them. These new weapons shall be a great asset both in the support of land campaigns, and most importantly, the domination of the Pacific.

We must also focus on the creation of a new type of soldier, one who will strike like a typhoon from the sea, siezing a foothold and quickly securing an objective. These 'Marines' as they shall be called will grant us the ability to strike anywhere, with the fury of a dragon and the finesse of a Samurai.

In the long run, our strategy must focus on the capture and annexation of key, resource rich areas. Namely, the Dutch Colonies, the US Pacific isles, New Guinea, Thailand and Malaysia. To achieve this objective, we shall need a sizeable force of the type I detailed above.

Listen to my words, and we shall propell Japan to a new golden age of glory, like none seen before!

"Tiger powder-induced eastern shenanigans" - Finnish Lord||||"I really enjoyed the Gulag" - Blade!||||"So sexy" - Franconian on violent insanity||||"The soft-pr0n ... I like it for the atmosphere it creates and the sheer spectacle of the thing" - Tufto||||"Swans are as dangerous as wolves. Got it." - Some fat racist German bloke in cheekless leiderhosen panties||||"I pooped myself. And then I did it again." - Yakman||||"Glory to the Confederate clan!" - Robotic Maniac

"I have hot cousins"||||"I once jokingly *CENSORED FOR FORUM* all my friends in the PE changing room"||||"I would lick GAZPROM drilled oil off of his shiny nipples" - Shynka, on incest, sport, and Vladimir Putin

Just a reminder to the players - your final plans should contain your proposed build orders/OOBs for a given period (e.g. Jan 1936 - Jan 1937). You can also prioritise construction of certain units over others, e.g. if carriers are prioritised over light carriers, then I will put them on a higher place in the production tab.

In regard to research, when you say that e.g. tanks should be prioritised, then I will interpret it in the way that your goal is to research all techs connected with the tanks in a sensible order. You can be more specific in your final plans if you wish and can prioritise certain techs over the others or exclude certain techs entirely.

If nothing special is happening, then I will simply proceed with your plans.

I also want to remind you that in matters concerning Japan as a whole, e.g. sliders, homeland infrastructure, diplomacy or intelligence both major factions will have to agree on a certain course of action.

If you have any questions concerning the rules etc., then ask them by PM in order not to clutter the thread.

If you would allow me to give my opinions to your worries, I would comment them in nearly the same order Your Imperial Majesty present them.

The Economy
As my emperor has stated Manchukuo hasn't improved over economy substantially except for the rich coal fields which are shipping to the Empire.
Even then the Resource flow graph is misleading, of the 62.1 crude oil we receive each day in fact only 2 are native, the rest is US imports (3000% of 2 oil = 60 oil for 75% of our base earnings).
Luckily we can still trade with various countries, but our oil imports are very depended on US goodwill therefore any more to antagonize them well mean a sharp drop in imports. Dependent on which strategy we decide on we might need to set-up a state trade with the US as our first action, selling some surplus supplies to cover for future resource needs. 1)
Our skilled negotiators in the private sector will take care of our trade in case we do not decide on a huge expansion of the industry.
Only 2 sources of oil is in any reasonable range of the homelands, namely the 2 Russian fields north of Vladivostok and the Dutch East Indies acquiring either will be a major task.

Diplomacy - the gunboat version
In case of war with the Chinese it would be important to insure no US interests are directly attacked or damaged, that includes the US treaty ports and their Gun boat patrols on the Chinese rivers.
We must be prepared for a US peace attempt after some time of hostilities, to this we must answer we seek peace, even if we don't, the Chinese will most likely say no as they want to reclaim Manchukou and their other Northern territories. In the unlikely case the Chinese says yes we could lose all we have taken until then unless we transform it into a puppet regime, say at Nanjing, and have them ship us their surplus resources.
Further expansion south, east or west will lead to conflict with the CW or US and their French lackeys, only if these are severely weakened can we take on both. To counter balance this we should seek allies ourself, Germany comes to mind as that would cause a rift between Germany and China. We should immediately begin to improve our relations with Germany. 2)
Expansion northward into Russia should not have so much influence on US opinion after the initial shock. The Russians are very vulnerable and depending on the Trans-Sibirian rail and have next to no surface fleet.

Research - General consideration.
Our research is limited by our small industry which currently provide 15 research teams and by our education which provide 2, only minor increase can be done in the near future of 0.5-1.5 from various sources.
Only a huge expansion of the industry can bring us more leadership resources, we are talking about a doubling of our current industrial capacity to get another 5 leadership at which point we are considered a greater power, and then nearly a doubling again to get 10 more at that point we would be a superpower with only 1-2 competitors.
This doubling can't be done through expansion alone as it would require around 200 industries to be acquired. 3)
The army has calculated that with even a moderate increase in the number of brigades we would need 3.25 leadership to keep the number of officers between 100% and 120% of minimum required.
Our trade diplomats would need around 0.1 maybe less to keep at around 20 diplomats in reserve.
Our intelligence would need around 0.8 to keep us free of enemy spies and take action against the Bolsheviks and defend our minions from unwanted attention.

Technologies
The army would like to research all the infantry tech but some cutbacks must be made airborne infantry should not be researched due to the follow up costs and desert war only if we have to fight for a long time in the Gobi desert. Many of the army's weapons are from pre-Great war designs, so this should be a major point of updates.

Armour, all artillery should be up to date as should armoured cars due to the huge amounts of each we have. As both our potential allies the Germans and the Soviets have dumped the IST so should we. Only a very limited research can be made into armour, should we need some quickly we should be able to buy some blue prints from the Germans hopefully. We also don't have enough research for rockets of any kind, though by 1943 we will have to make a re-evaluation of this or if we get to greater power or superpower status.

Ships are mainly the domain of the Navy but the Army has some needs that only the navy can provide, secure transportation as we don't want to lose 10's of 1000 due to missing escorts, Secure supplies, we don't want to fight without bullets again these must be protected, some support in coast near provinces from the battleships shorebombartment and aircover from the navys 2-3 Aircraft Carrier Vehicles.

Bombers, we simply can't afford the research here, only the navy should research some Maritime Attack Ordinance.

Fighters should be kept up to date, as these technologies also helps the light bombers we should keep, only the rocket dependent technologies must wait.

Industry, here we need to ignore Nuclear research and most of the chemistry techs and AA. Production, efficiency and supplies should be done fast the rest should be kept up to date. The electronics are also a major area of research and should be kept up to date.

Secrets when available.

Of the Theories the supply and repair should be kept up to date.

Land and operation, everything.

Naval, the navy should concentrate on a single escort and find out what they want with the capital ships, these are horrible expensive to cover everything, Sealane interdiction might be a good first step for dumping. Base operations is on the other hand a must to keep up to time.

In Air, we should keep Fighter, CAS, CaG and dump bomber and the target choices, the Startegic Airforce is also too expensive in all resources. Installation is also not strictly needed. I would suggest the navy dump Base suppression and keep the other 2.

Even if we decide this we will still not be able to keep up unless we soon get to greater power status. The expected research is only equal to 1, read one, in each field at a time, this will in the length have disastrous result on our ability fight only acquiring more research can remedy this.

Doctrines
Tank doctrines are split among 3 different approaches, Infantry support tank in France and CW, Combined Arms in Soviet and US, pure armour in Germany. IST looks like a loser compared to the 2 others, the bonus from Schwerpunkt looks like the best of the other 2. This would be a deviation from our current doctrine. Should we chose this we need to stop upgrades on the IST and rebuild them as either L.Arm or Arm.

Operational doctrines, also here we have an interesting choice, the Grand battle plan is too defensive in nature and would not suit our soldiers, we don't expect to build so many armour that blitzkrieg would be worth it, unless the navy skips building capital ships at all. Human wave is our current doctrine but has the fatal weakness that all bonus goes to helping in battles with huge numbers of troops concentrated in small areas, this wont happen in more than 2-3 places in Asia so we should skip the heroic vision of the Samurai with Katana storming in waves against machine guns slaughtering our people. This leaves Superior firepower with all its artillery and AC bonus available, only disadvantage is that we have not yet researched Motorized Support Brigades, but we should be able to remedy that soon.
There is no clear advantage to changing from Infiltration and Maneuver concepts, we will get a lot of bonus to fighting in bad terrain and most of the interesting places of the world is like that.

Naval plans
I would advice the Navy to dump the CA that is planed to start just now, as its neither bird nor fish. Also the CAG's should be build in series as they will finish much earlier than the ACV thus freeing up much needed IC.

Aircrafts
Due to the huge costs and research intensiveness of multi engine aircraft we should concentrate on single engine aircraft, both as land bombers, fighters and naval bombers.

Infrastructure of the current areas
There should be no need to improve this where we are now, only place where there could be a real need is the 2 provinces Pukchin and Ch'onch'on which could be upgraded, but are not really needed.
The reason being that if we fight the Chinese we would get other supply sources along the coast, in fact those should be our first targets in such a conflict.
In a conflict with the Russians Vladivostok will help plenty here until the fighting moves far inland. Then Ulya, Okha and Nikolayevsk-na-Amure (we need to rename that!!!) should be the the main focus of improvements.

Defence
In case the navy isn't able to stop any would be invader, that could only be CW, France or USA we would need to beef up the defences substantially, but now we just need to guard against surprise invasions.
I would prefer to just garrison every port for now, some garrison troops with a bit of artillery in each port and an infantry corps as a backup on the home land.
This would need around 10-12 garrison division to be created.

Budget
I estimate that we should use around 12 IC on upgrades, 15 IC on supplies, and if we exchange any ministers for better reseach 3.5 IC on consumer goods, 0.25 on reinforcements, slightly more if we build reserve units.
This leaves around 74 IC for production, if the Navy cancels the useless CA and build the CAG's in series they only use around 26 IC on that, we then need to start a series of 99 convoys which we will need anyway costing 3 IC, leaving 45 IC.
Now we have 2 options, go for a quick conquest or a slow buildup of industry, if we go for industry we can start 8 and have the CAG as buffer as its estimated build still is much earlier than the ACV even if a 2nd still need to be build.
When the destroyer finishes we should build some gar divisions to guard our ports.
This budget brings us to '37.
Should we ignore industry we need to make a fast conquest of something, then we could build 8 times infantry division with 2 brigades, this 4 times 2 division combined with the mix division should give some resonable 2inf+1support divs. There is no reason to build any airforce nor fleet as they wont be finished when we need them and we need overwhelming numbers to end it quickly.

1) We should sell 25 supplies to the US else they will have no money later to buy from us and all trades come to a halt.
2) We should align to the Axis immediately.
3) 200 at 50% = the extra 100 we need, are there so many we can conquer in all of Asia?

Your highness,
-Given that we are an island nation, it comes as no surprise that our focus should be toward having a strong, modern navy, that can protect our trade routes, and the home-islands. But since the best defense is a strong offense. I can't express the importance of developing more carriers for our fleet, as they are the best vessels capable of projecting our power if we ever have to face the navies of the other major powers, such as USA or the UK. For that, we will need a long term plan to atleast have 8 carriers, grouped in 3 fleets of 3CVx2, and 2CVx1 as reserve. The BS fleet can be used for home defense, while I recommend any BCs to be used as carrier-escort.
-China, although rich in resources, lacks the infrastructure that can allow us to extract the riches. The nightmare to garrison the vast expense of lands is unimaginable. If we are forced to take action in China, I would recommend creating of puppets to help in keeping order.
-Occupying China can also mean a huge front with the russians, which I think is undesirable for the well being of the Empire.

My fellow generals, gracious emperor, Fools rush in. While General Surt might be quite right with his analysis of achieving a final superpower status with which to solidify our Empires position in history, his belief that our strategy should be one of appeasement with the Chinese and US is wrong.

General VeteranLurker and I agree that for us to become the dominant regional and later super power, that we need a strong navy. For this General Rommel_HSQ’s plan for a major expansion of naval might is both sensible and wise. But before we talk specifics, let us look at an overall strategy.

To build superpower status, we must prepare to conquest. However any conquests made, if they are viewed as defeats by the other major powers of the world, or as militarist expansion will not be supported. In this we cannot look to achieve our status as a superpower without allies.

The old European Entente powers won the Great War by having the greater support of the world. Namely their own colonies, and later the support of the United States. We must seek the same form of alliances to solidify our position in the region! The autocratic models under Hitler and Mussolini closely mirror our own structures of government. Furthermore having watched them build up their statuses and flaunt their own political might makes them strong dynamic allies.
We should support, and align ourselves to this new fascist ideology!

In doing this we gain, a strong global stance with at least two major European powers, equal to the two European powers that hold colonial assets in the pacific. Even directly, this puts us on an equal footing. Should the allied western powers, decide that they want to fight for their colonies, they we shall have friends in Europe to deter, or dissuade them to that course of action.

Yet! Having these strong allies alone will not be enough.

They are too distant to bring legitimacy, and direct support of our Empire building ambitions. For this we need new allies, within our sphere of influence.

Should the question of Li Zongren seeking to form a coalition with the Kuomintang arise, we should block such ‘greater china’ movements, and instead seek a new wave of nationalism in the expansive lands of Guangxi, offering an alliance to the New Clique, and support its modernization movements.

Similarly Long Yun, as the ‘King of Yunnan’ would be better kept in that position, as a friendly power than one which would seek to unify with the Kuomintang. However significant effort may be required to build a pro-Japanese movement here, as there may be communist sympathizers within Yunnan’s populace.

For this we must build and maintain! Not only the homeland intelligence network for counter espionage! If we lower our neutrality too much, then other major powers will have good reason to take our empire building progress as militarist expansionism. In this respect;

Get 50% of the populace to support interventionalist attitudes (lower neutrality to 50, but not futher right now)
Then, as we are working on our own people, bring full intelligence networks into being in both Gung and Yunnan, to support fascism (our party), and hence eventually add to the Axis alliance. Working on these warlords, should also provide proximity influence in Thailand, and possibly allow us to gain them into the alliance. Although I would restrain from this action right now.

At the same time, working on making the Chinese Civil war be a threat to the stability of the region, will not only give us a fully legitimate reason for our interventionalist attitudes, it will put us in the light of supporters of peace and prosperity.
This is by far the most important thing we can do. If we can keep the Chinese at war, then join the war ourselves, and annex both the Peoples Republic, and Kuomintang controlled regions we shall add the industrial might of the heartlands of China to our cause, as well as be able to call on the men of China to fill a massive militia army quickly raised, to stand off with the Bolsheviks of the Soviet Union. Even if we never seek hostilities there.

This is why I ask all of us, to set the goal of building a cause for action in China, getting the Warlord Cliques on our side, rather than the Kuomintang. Then when the time is right, sparking the seed of war, and annexing all of the Heartland of China. Puppet governments should be avoided. True Empires are built on claiming territory as your own, then putting all opposition to the sword!

I suggest we set a timescale for this endeavour within the next three years.

After this we shall need to plan carefully. We may be unsure to our European axis allies movements, should the Bolsheviks come to power in Europe we may need to aid our friends, if not then we might want to seek our claims in Manchuria as the carcass of the Soviet Union is picked clean.

Similarly, we may not know how the Allied powers will end up on viewing our intervention. Should they seek to maintain the status quo, it is my belief this should be maintained as long as possible, even if this means not playing gunboat diplomacy with colonial assets as we flex our own might.

It is my view that we should not plan for this stage yet. Let us first build a solid base in china to review our options.

Intelligence & Research
1. Intelligence & Diplomacy
1.a Allocate our brightest, as building a homeland intelligence network (10 spies) (Lv.3)
1.b Allocate a full compliment (10 spies) propagandists, and operatives into Yunnan and Gunagxi Clique, supporting the current regimes, as well as fascist principles (our government). (Lv. 3)
1.c Allocate, some operatives to the PRC and Kuomintang. (Lv.2), to make their civil war appear more threatening to world peace (increase threat mission)

Once the first three networks are established in the next month or so, we can cut our leadership allocation just enough to maintain the first 3. I estimate we shall need to train about 0.1 spies per day. I cannot tell you exactly how many of our leaders this should take, but after the initial training period, we should be able to cut our leadership allocation in this area by five, down to 0.02 spies. This should allow us to maintain our mission there.

CLAUSE: 1.b
Should either of the two warlords seek to undo our missions by counter-espionage efforts, we should immediately switch to destroy their homeland intelligence networks, to allow our operatives their full effect, and to insure as few of our covert methods are detected as possible.

Note: We should seek to install at least one representative minister that gives our intelligence efforts a boon, to aid us in this effort. This means us to review our Minister of Security Goto Fumio and Head of Intelligence Okamura Yasuji, for more suitable candidates. The latter most of all needs to be removed from his current position.

2. Officer Corps
2.a Our officer corps, do not need significant bolstering, we should probably seek to maintain a strong 110% ratio, for now, insuring that we shall have replacements for our armed forces if and when we need them.

3. Research
3.a As our current armed forces consists primarily of infantry, keeping top research in their small armaments, defensive and offensive support weapons should be not only be kept up to date, but forced ahead of the current year as much as possible as we build our superpower. III

CLAUSE: 3.a should we find within the next few years, that we are lacking good progress for investment (research penalty), then we should use those interim periods to improve the aspects of our specialist forces. Focusing on assault weapons, lightweight weapons or other jungle equipment.

3.b I agree with General Surt that we need to develop a naval marine corps. This should be a primary focus, allocated to being developed now, then like with our land forces, one research slot kept open to keep them as up-to-date with amphibious warfare techniques as much as possible. Please See The Pacific Protection Plan (PPP). IV

3.c Again, I concur that industrial methods need to be kept up-to-date, but I disagree with the notion that industrial production needs to be a focus right now. We only need efficiency. We should allocate 10 (or near to 10) IC units, to build new industrial plants in our homeland or the Korean territories. V

By keeping the efficiency higher in the short term, we gain a few weeks on production efforts now. We can improve the production methods in the near future, the bonus to production we shall get if at war with a national war effort, will dwarf the small gains spent now improving production.

Efficiency on the other hand will reduce all our production cycles. When at war, then we change over. By waiting to gain better practical knowledge via building some new factories, will add experience to insure that the production techniques technology will be improved at just under 33% of the rate it would have been if started now. Thus gaining us many man-hours worth of research that could be spent elsewhere.

3.d Not being an acting naval commander, I suggest we hand over 5 slots (if possible) to the naval commanders to decide for themselves. X

3.e I would disagree with General Surt perhaps in his swift dismissal of bomber technologies. These will drastically improve our land combat abilities, given that other nations in the region lack a comparable airforce.

I would seek to improve both our CAGs now XII, and aim towards developing a heavy fighter capable of both air and ground combat. This might take up to 7 slots in total to not only maintain, up-to-date, but world leader! Thus bringing us to a full 15 units of leadership manpower.

This unfortunately does leave our light armour and artillery lacking in the short term. However, when we improve our international status, we can review additional research projects.

3.g Doctrines
At some point in the next couple of years we should take the opportunity (before seeking to move into China) to review our battleplans. I agree with General Surt that Manuver focus, is important. But I would stick with a defensive Grand Battleplan format for our armed forces.

The reason for this is that we may, over time, come to rely on not taking casualties in far-to-supply regions of Asia, after all, with a lack of ground artillery focus, in favour of a more fluid ‘air artillery’ focus, the boons favoured here in defensiveness, are better for ‘pinning’ enemies, where our air assets can then engage.
3.g.I Cross Doctrine Light Armour

Take the Armoured Schwerpunk path for AC and L-Arm bonuses, for the first two levels, then switch to Cavalry Tank, at the 1940(?) level, to gain another L-Arm bonus, don’t bother with any tank techs other than L-Arm, and then focus on armour, and reliability (then gun). Speed isn’t important, and by the time combat in China is over, we probably will ot have developed any real Tank corps.

Fit this in when it can be, rather than pushed ahead of year. If anything keeping it almost a year behind, so as to emphasis man-hours elsewhere.

Tanks after that will end up in a combined arms support roll with our expeditionary forces, but mainly will just add firepower, not being used for mobile warfare. They would do well to be attached to some of our cavalry units, after the pacification of China which will keep fuel costs down in these divisions, as well as make good use of our experienced cavalry commanders.

Pacific Protection Plan (PPP)
Garrisoning each nay every island is a waste of strategic resources. Not only does it involve training new garrison forces, it also means long lengthy convoys that must be sent out to each island individually. The garrisons will not be able to function without supplies, and the supply ships are a vulnerable entity, even if we protect them with convoy escorts.
It is my view that that the minor islands of the pacific are a strategic weakness, rather than strength to Imperial Japan.
Instead we should concentrate our pacific garrisons at three key points. Saipan, Malolap and Truk. Saipan’s strategic position not only allows it a short sea link to Tinian where we can place additional marines to support a Saipan garrison, but it commands Guam, Iwo Jimi and Wake with its airfield and naval base. These assets we should seek to improve, also constructing coastal defences to allow a small garrison not to be overwhelmed while our marine forces resolve force projection over these islands.

In that sense, I would advocate a mobile defence strategery to the islands of the pacific.

Mazola, might not be Kwajalein in terms of military base potential, but what it is, is central to the local pacific islands. With fairly short distances connecting each of the islands. Therefore we should not see Mazola, Kwajalein, Bikini and the rest as individual islands, but rather as one big island that needs a suitable mobile garrison.

Upgrading the light infrastructure here, with many docks, ferries and light road networks will be key to this strategy. Given that the islands are small, the industrial investment will also be very small. However it will be crucial to enable our marines to rapidly deploy between the islands as they are attacked. To this end keeping their forces pure, and not building static defences, except perhaps at Kwajalein where we should maintain a garrison at the port for supply purposes, will be key.
Yap and Turk (and Palau) are far less strategic in this aspect, while Palau may be useful in an invasion of the Philippines, it serves no other purposes and should, like Iwo Jimi, Wake and Mili be left undefended. Yap and Truck however need to maintain a small garrison, again mobile. But not seek to be overly defended. The strength in the island chains is that they require an amphibious assault. That is difficult, their weakness is supply since an army can use that to hurt the war effort without ever needing to set foot on the island, and troops without supplies can’t fight. Hence there is no point in a garrison.
Since we are keeping our Pacific forces light and mobile, we shall have more assets capable for ambitions in Manchuria, and the South Pacific. The island of Borneo is, and should be Japanese by right. It’s oil will greatly help the nation of Japan, soo long as we can keep the supply ships convoying!

In terms of budget;
1. Have the infrastructure items placed early January, they will be completed very quickly, and add (a small amount) to construction practical, thus aiding our industrial improvements

2. Then use the same slots for an airfield on Saipan, and possibly a coastal fort. Although this is not of huge important right now.

3. Recombine, our garrisons to the three ‘port islands’ (3 brigades apiece), return any addtional garrisons to Honshu, then redistribute them to other home ports on mainland Japan, Taiwan or Naha

4. Build 2, 4x Marine divisions for Saipan and Malolap when we have the ability to do so
5. Build 2, 3x Marine divisions for Truk, and Kwajalein.

The IJN should be prepared to aid such islands against invasion if and when they occur. Seeking to oust invasion when they take place to deny ports, but not seek to hold out individually.
I hope you IJN Admirals concur with this plan of action, and would support the strategic initive.

General Budget
I would seek to support General Surts IC policy, but perhaps rather fewer new factories, instead swapping out a couple of those 8, for infrastructure as part of the PPP, marines being built as and when, in a later build cycle.
I would however seek to see a far lower amount to be spent on the upgrades, instead at a rate to supply 20% of our armed forces for the moment, we have a long time to upgrade them, without immediate need to do so, we can spend subtiatally more to upgrade them nearer the build up to war.

Agreed on keeping dissent low, possibly just above required on consumer goods, also seeking reappointments in the ministry to keep this low. We may want to produce a decent (+5 to +20) supplies surplus, in the medium term, depending on the other production costs, mainly to insure a strong positive trade balance, for which funds can be spend on industrial or research based investment initives, as well as building up a stronger surplus in the warehouses.

Having a new carrier in the dry dock is a good initive to build a strong navy, and support it, and its CAGs construction.
Later we should seek at least 3 new corps worth of pure infantry (12x, 3xINF divisions), built in 3 parallel, 4 serial. This should give us the required manpower for later operations in China.

Should we have spare IC left over here, I ask the naval admirals to put in other requests. Although, let us keep the capitals to 2 at a time, and then stagged builds to make the most of flexibility in the budget, and utilising practical knowledge.

My Emperor:
Ours is the great people of Nippon. We, by divine right, ought to be the masters of all lands in our ocean. The riches we seek however, are not in the lands of China, but in the islands to the south, occupied by the ‘empires’ of Britain and the colonies of France and the Netherlands. Our oil situation alone could be solved with the reclamation of the ‘Dutch east indies’, and our coal, metal and rare materials situation can easily be resolved by the occupation of IndoChina and westwards.
The blessings of the sea also are a curse. All our materials our industry needs must be carried by transport ship. These ships must be protected. The question then is, how do we protect them? To do this, we must build a naval fleet to be worthy of your name. The battleship and the heavy cruiser must be built for control of the sea lanes, and light cruisers and destroyers must be built to both protect our convoys from enemy raiders, and to perform lighting raids on enemy shipping. And in this we have the advantage! We have torn up that Washington navy treaty, and our engineers are already reporting that 18 inch naval guns are possible to be fitted to our ships. We must do this, and now!
To this then, I would agree for the most part with Yamamoto-San with a few adjustments.
1: Our naval forces will take time to be designed and constructed. I would recommend that we immediately assign our engineers to designing the next generation of battleships and heavy cruisers. I estimate that the next generation will take close to a year to design.
2: Even as the next generation is being constructed, we must build at least one battleship and two heavy cruisers now, to give our industry the expertise and practical knowledge for these constructions. Also, one destroyer flotilla should also be always being produced.
3: As our production of resources is so important, I would also recommend that we seek ways to better extract these resources. Therefore I recommend we seek industrial efficiency, coal production and conversion of coal into oil.
4: I cannot disagree with Yamamoto-San’s assessment of the diplomatic situation, and I endorse his proposal to align ourselves with our German friends.
5: Carriers however are nothing more than a waste of time and money. No aircraft will be able to ever sink a ship, as any aircraft that comes close to a warship would fall under the large barrage of gunfire. I would recommend not spending any money on those wastes of time.
6: The naval landing forces should see an expansion, the distingued gentlemen have recommended.

I thank the generals for their input, but I have different opinions in some matters. The defense of the Home Islands should be under the IJN, with some help from some regular army units if need be. For the Pacific islands, we should plan for an aggressive stance if we want to go with the carrier route. All of our islands with a level 1 naval base should be garrisoned. If anyone fall into enemy hands, it will be used as a jump point toward our great nation. The planned marines should take Taiwan as their HQ (Taiwan should be part of the IJN command).

For bases:
-Saipan: for home defense; naval and airforce.
-North Palau: Excellent position, close to the Philippines, rich-Indonesia and Australia. We need to expand the naval base there and build an airport as well.
-Kwajalein and Eniwetok: Good forward bases for operations against USA. Air and Naval bases should be expanded as much as possible.

The number proposed by General Gensui Yamamoto for the marines is too large and I would rather have some reserve-CAG's in addition to Nav-bombers. 5 or 6 marines divisions should be enough.

we agree that Taiwan and indeed all Pacific islands should be under navy command. We therefore suggest to increase the size of all garrisons to at least three brigades each.
We also agree on the expansion of naval facilities in the afore mentioned key bases. This will benefit our fleets greatly and will enable us to maintain a larger presence in these areas. We likewise suggest to expand the airfields on these islands to enable us the usage of land based support and protection where the fleet can't steam to in time.

We are in disagreement about the required naval infantry formations. Our estimates are based around the idea of swiftly occupying the harbours ans key cities of our enemies. Depending on the area of operation, we will need at the very least two full corps of such infantry, with five divisions each and three brigades each. These landing forces will need to be able to capture and hold a set area of operation against opposition, at least until the army can be shipped in to take over. This will require one corps per harbour and we will want to capture as many harbours in as short a time as possible to deprive our enemy of international supplies and to strengthen our own lines of supplies.
The formation of these two corps should be finished by early / mid 1937 at the latest, with a responsible army HQ set up on Taiwan.

We furthermore suggest to detach the garrsion divisions in northern Korea from army command and move them to Navy command. We assume that the army would want to have mobile forces while the IJN, if truly solely responsible for the safety of Japan and her Pacific islands, is short on land formations which would not be of much use in a mobile warfare anyway. As mentioned above, all garrisons should at least consist of 3 brigades, even on the smaller stations. Futhermore, all ports in Japan must be protected by a similar unit. The afore mentioned naval infantry will react as an emergency force in case the home islands should be threatened.

We furthermore agree with Gensui Yamamoto in so far as his accessment on Intelligence is correct, but lacking the part of research. We will need to produce ever better ships, hence we will need to research in these areas as well, namely heavy cruisers, battleships and battlecruisers. Of course, we need to invest into tactics and doctrines as well, as far as the afore mentioned units benefit from them.

We should still try to recruit a number of officers, though. As we are expanding both the army and the navy, the need for more officers if obvious and we are of course expecting combat and with combat, casulties are inevitable. Waiting with officer recruitment until we actually need them will mean that our forces will be poorly led when they need the leadership the most; in the early hours of battle.

We also do disagree on the neccessity of building additional industrial plants. Frankly, we should limit such efforts to the absolute minimum and instead concentrate on the creation of more forces for all three branches. The army will need the air force, as the navy can't be everywhere to smash the enemy with big guns.

Of course, we strongly disagree on Gensui Yamamoto's outrageous idea of abandoning even one of our islands in the Pacific. Not only is this a question of honor, it is also a matter of handing the enemy Japanese soil, from which he then can attack even further into the heart of the empire. The navy will be able to defend the islands, if we have a strong base in their midst and have units on each island to hold off the attackers until the ships arrive to blast the enemy away.

Generally, we would suggest to build the afore mentioned ships and spend the rest on land units, as we feel that the army will need to be increased substantially for war. We also suggest to keep sufficient land forces in Japan and make them ready to support any marine bridgehead. This way, the army will be able to engage any enemy on their terms... after the marines have take the neccessary facilities.

we agree that Taiwan and indeed all Pacific islands should be under navy command. We therefore suggest to increase the size of all garrisons to at least three brigades each.
We also agree on the expansion of naval facilities in the afore mentioned key bases. This will benefit our fleets greatly and will enable us to maintain a larger presence in these areas. We likewise suggest to expand the airfields on these islands to enable us the usage of land based support and protection where the fleet can't steam to in time.

We are in disagreement about the required naval infantry formations. Our estimates are based around the idea of swiftly occupying the harbours ans key cities of our enemies. Depending on the area of operation, we will need at the very least two full corps of such infantry, with five divisions each and three brigades each. These landing forces will need to be able to capture and hold a set area of operation against opposition, at least until the army can be shipped in to take over. This will require one corps per harbour and we will want to capture as many harbours in as short a time as possible to deprive our enemy of international supplies and to strengthen our own lines of supplies.
The formation of these two corps should be finished by early / mid 1937 at the latest, with a responsible army HQ set up on Taiwan.

We furthermore suggest to detach the garrsion divisions in northern Korea from army command and move them to Navy command. We assume that the army would want to have mobile forces while the IJN, if truly solely responsible for the safety of Japan and her Pacific islands, is short on land formations which would not be of much use in a mobile warfare anyway. As mentioned above, all garrisons should at least consist of 3 brigades, even on the smaller stations. Futhermore, all ports in Japan must be protected by a similar unit. The afore mentioned naval infantry will react as an emergency force in case the home islands should be threatened.

I disagree on the size of the marine corps and still think we don't need such a huge amount invested in it. The marines rule should be the storming of strategic islands that can only be attacked from the sea or to establish a bridgehead from which the army can land immediately and take over. Doing multiple landings will mean multiple escorts and thats highly unrecommended since it will divide our fleets in small peaces that can become easy targets. My doctrine call for two strong carrier fleets that should never be split. They also should be responsible for the escort of the landings and provide support. to ensure success.

My fellow generals, gracious emperor, Fools rush in. While General Surt might be quite right with his analysis of achieving a final superpower status with which to solidify our Empires position in history, his belief that our strategy should be one of appeasement with the Chinese and US is wrong.

The appearance of appeasement is important, not actual politics.

General VeteranLurker and I agree that for us to become the dominant regional and later super power, that we need a strong navy. For this General Rommel_HSQ’s plan for a major expansion of naval might is both sensible and wise. But before we talk specifics, let us look at an overall strategy.

A large fleet should be build ... later, now we are so weak on the ground that the Chinese and Soviets would swamp us.

To build superpower status, we must prepare to conquest. However any conquests made, if they are viewed as defeats by the other major powers of the world, or as militarist expansion will not be supported. In this we cannot look to achieve our status as a superpower without allies.

The old European Entente powers won the Great War by having the greater support of the world. Namely their own colonies, and later the support of the United States. We must seek the same form of alliances to solidify our position in the region! The autocratic models under Hitler and Mussolini closely mirror our own structures of government. Furthermore having watched them build up their statuses and flaunt their own political might makes them strong dynamic allies.
We should support, and align ourselves to this new fascist ideology!

You make my very point here, we need to keep the US out of a war as long as possible, their reinforcement of the colonial powers would be undesirable.
I agree that we need to set up the Europeans against each other, in that way the Germans and Italians are useful stooges, as the fascists they are they don't support the Emperor in any other way.

In doing this we gain, a strong global stance with at least two major European powers, equal to the two European powers that hold colonial assets in the pacific. Even directly, this puts us on an equal footing. Should the allied western powers, decide that they want to fight for their colonies, they we shall have friends in Europe to deter, or dissuade them to that course of action.

Yet! Having these strong allies alone will not be enough.

They are too distant to bring legitimacy, and direct support of our Empire building ambitions. For this we need new allies, within our sphere of influence.

Should the question of Li Zongren seeking to form a coalition with the Kuomintang arise, we should block such ‘greater china’ movements, and instead seek a new wave of nationalism in the expansive lands of Guangxi, offering an alliance to the New Clique, and support its modernization movements.

Similarly Long Yun, as the ‘King of Yunnan’ would be better kept in that position, as a friendly power than one which would seek to unify with the Kuomintang. However significant effort may be required to build a pro-Japanese movement here, as there may be communist sympathizers within Yunnan’s populace.

I might agree that Guangxi could be nice allies, but Yunnan is worthless. But I see that Li Zongren would be among the first supporters of the KMT in case of external conflict, they after all claim to be KMT themselves.
This is a gamble, if GuangXi can be won over it should be a war winner in China, if not we have wasted 2 leadership for 2-3 years.

For this we must build and maintain! Not only the homeland intelligence network for counter espionage! If we lower our neutrality too much, then other major powers will have good reason to take our empire building progress as militarist expansionism. In this respect;

Get 50% of the populace to support interventionalist attitudes (lower neutrality to 50, but not futher right now)
Then, as we are working on our own people, bring full intelligence networks into being in both Gung and Yunnan, to support fascism (our party), and hence eventually add to the Axis alliance. Working on these warlords, should also provide proximity influence in Thailand, and possibly allow us to gain them into the alliance. Although I would restrain from this action right now.

Ehm, I know You support the "other" party, but I'm more for the PA point of view!

At the same time, working on making the Chinese Civil war be a threat to the stability of the region, will not only give us a fully legitimate reason for our interventionalist attitudes, it will put us in the light of supporters of peace and prosperity.
This is by far the most important thing we can do. If we can keep the Chinese at war, then join the war ourselves, and annex both the Peoples Republic, and Kuomintang controlled regions we shall add the industrial might of the heartlands of China to our cause, as well as be able to call on the men of China to fill a massive militia army quickly raised, to stand off with the Bolsheviks of the Soviet Union. Even if we never seek hostilities there.

This heartland is sadly very poor in industry, only around 100 factories in total of who max half will work for us, 20 less if we deduct Guangxi and Yunnan.
I hear strong forces on the KMT side is trying to end the Civil war already, only Chiang is vehemently opposed to peace with the Communists, so the war might stop before we can intervene.

This is why I ask all of us, to set the goal of building a cause for action in China, getting the Warlord Cliques on our side, rather than the Kuomintang. Then when the time is right, sparking the seed of war, and annexing all of the Heartland of China. Puppet governments should be avoided. True Empires are built on claiming territory as your own, then putting all opposition to the sword!

I suggest we set a timescale for this endeavour within the next three years.

After this we shall need to plan carefully. We may be unsure to our European axis allies movements, should the Bolsheviks come to power in Europe we may need to aid our friends, if not then we might want to seek our claims in Manchuria as the carcass of the Soviet Union is picked clean.

Should the Bolsheviks win a war against the other European major powers we would be doomed, our intervention would be urgently required should anyone (major) attack the Soviets.

Similarly, we may not know how the Allied powers will end up on viewing our intervention. Should they seek to maintain the status quo, it is my belief this should be maintained as long as possible, even if this means not playing gunboat diplomacy with colonial assets as we flex our own might.

It is my view that we should not plan for this stage yet. Let us first build a solid base in china to review our options.

Intelligence & Research
1. Intelligence & Diplomacy
1.a Allocate our brightest, as building a homeland intelligence network (10 spies) (Lv.3)
1.b Allocate a full compliment (10 spies) propagandists, and operatives into Yunnan and Gunagxi Clique, supporting the current regimes, as well as fascist principles (our government). (Lv. 3)
1.c Allocate, some operatives to the PRC and Kuomintang. (Lv.2), to make their civil war appear more threatening to world peace (increase threat mission)

Might I point out that we are not fascists but Paternal Autocrats!

Once the first three networks are established in the next month or so, we can cut our leadership allocation just enough to maintain the first 3. I estimate we shall need to train about 0.1 spies per day. I cannot tell you exactly how many of our leaders this should take, but after the initial training period, we should be able to cut our leadership allocation in this area by five, down to 0.02 spies. This should allow us to maintain our mission there.

CLAUSE: 1.b
Should either of the two warlords seek to undo our missions by counter-espionage efforts, we should immediately switch to destroy their homeland intelligence networks, to allow our operatives their full effect, and to insure as few of our covert methods are detected as possible.

Note: We should seek to install at least one representative minister that gives our intelligence efforts a boon, to aid us in this effort. This means us to review our Minister of Security Goto Fumio and Head of Intelligence Okamura Yasuji, for more suitable candidates. The latter most of all needs to be removed from his current position.

Okamura could be replaced by the research specialist.
Setting a man of the people on the security minister post is dangerous but profitable, the crime fighter is not that needed yet.

2. Officer Corps
2.a Our officer corps, do not need significant bolstering, we should probably seek to maintain a strong 110% ratio, for now, insuring that we shall have replacements for our armed forces if and when we need them.

Just to keep it up we need a significant investment if we build any kind of troops, fewer if we don't build any.

3. Research
3.a As our current armed forces consists primarily of infantry, keeping top research in their small armaments, defensive and offensive support weapons should be not only be kept up to date, but forced ahead of the current year as much as possible as we build our superpower. III

Any kind of ahead of time research is waste of good leadership.

CLAUSE: 3.a should we find within the next few years, that we are lacking good progress for investment (research penalty), then we should use those interim periods to improve the aspects of our specialist forces. Focusing on assault weapons, lightweight weapons or other jungle equipment.

3.b I agree with General Surt that we need to develop a naval marine corps. This should be a primary focus, allocated to being developed now, then like with our land forces, one research slot kept open to keep them as up-to-date with amphibious warfare techniques as much as possible. Please See The Pacific Protection Plan (PPP). IV

Marines are nice and will be needed for actions post-40 they are fluff earlier but not that expensive again.

3.c Again, I concur that industrial methods need to be kept up-to-date, but I disagree with the notion that industrial production needs to be a focus right now. We only need efficiency. We should allocate 10 (or near to 10) IC units, to build new industrial plants in our homeland or the Korean territories. V

10? I don't see we get anywhere with less than an all out build in the first years?
It might be overall advantage to build a single coastal fortress to gain a little practice instead of one of the 8 factories.

By keeping the efficiency higher in the short term, we gain a few weeks on production efforts now. We can improve the production methods in the near future, the bonus to production we shall get if at war with a national war effort, will dwarf the small gains spent now improving production.

Efficiency on the other hand will reduce all our production cycles. When at war, then we change over. By waiting to gain better practical knowledge via building some new factories, will add experience to insure that the production techniques technology will be improved at just under 33% of the rate it would have been if started now. Thus gaining us many man-hours worth of research that could be spent elsewhere.

The first factories take 14 months, -2.5% from efficiency, -2% perhaps from practice from a coastal fortress. The next ones takes considerable less and costs only 2/3.

3.d Not being an acting naval commander, I suggest we hand over 5 slots (if possible) to the naval commanders to decide for themselves. X

I'm not sure I can follow you here, we will have aprox 17.25 LS , we need
2 LS for 0.1 spy
3 LS for officers assuming we only build 3 inf div at a time (when we get to that)
5 for naval
4 for ahead of time upgrade of infantry (which I totally disagree with)
leaving 3.25 for other???

oh I had forgotten the 7 you wanted to use for air, excluding the ones the navy uses on air.

I must have misunderstood something about what you wanted, else these numbers are not making sense to me.

3.e I would disagree with General Surt perhaps in his swift dismissal of bomber technologies. These will drastically improve our land combat abilities, given that other nations in the region lack a comparable airforce.

I don't say don't use bomber, I say use only light bombers. There will always be some area of China that can be hit by light bombers, in Russia its a little bit more difficult.

I would seek to improve both our CAGs now XII, and aim towards developing a heavy fighter capable of both air and ground combat. This might take up to 7 slots in total to not only maintain, up-to-date, but world leader! Thus bringing us to a full 15 units of leadership manpower.

This unfortunately does leave our light armour and artillery lacking in the short term. However, when we improve our international status, we can review additional research projects.

We got 50 AA+Art and 30 AC, we should not short hand those, L.Arm is gonna be a very slow development I agree.

3.g Doctrines
At some point in the next couple of years we should take the opportunity (before seeking to move into China) to review our battleplans. I agree with General Surt that Manuver focus, is important. But I would stick with a defensive Grand Battleplan format for our armed forces.

We got human wave atm. :/ (or I got a totally different HPP than you?).

The reason for this is that we may, over time, come to rely on not taking casualties in far-to-supply regions of Asia, after all, with a lack of ground artillery focus, in favour of a more fluid ‘air artillery’ focus, the boons favoured here in defensiveness, are better for ‘pinning’ enemies, where our air assets can then engage.

Defensive action is just not Japanese, our soldiers moral can't handle defence on the long run! We must attack, just not in human waves but under artillery cover.

3.g.I Cross Doctrine Light Armour

Take the Armoured Schwerpunk path for AC and L-Arm bonuses, for the first two levels, then switch to Cavalry Tank, at the 1940(?) level, to gain another L-Arm bonus, don’t bother with any tank techs other than L-Arm, and then focus on armour, and reliability (then gun). Speed isn’t important, and by the time combat in China is over, we probably will ot have developed any real Tank corps.

Fit this in when it can be, rather than pushed ahead of year. If anything keeping it almost a year behind, so as to emphasis man-hours elsewhere.

Tanks after that will end up in a combined arms support roll with our expeditionary forces, but mainly will just add firepower, not being used for mobile warfare. They would do well to be attached to some of our cavalry units, after the pacification of China which will keep fuel costs down in these divisions, as well as make good use of our experienced cavalry commanders.

I'm afraid our tanks will live a miserable existence until we get the riches the colonial powers are withholding from us.

Pacific Protection Plan (PPP)
Garrisoning each nay every island is a waste of strategic resources. Not only does it involve training new garrison forces, it also means long lengthy convoys that must be sent out to each island individually. The garrisons will not be able to function without supplies, and the supply ships are a vulnerable entity, even if we protect them with convoy escorts.
It is my view that that the minor islands of the pacific are a strategic weakness, rather than strength to Imperial Japan.
Instead we should concentrate our pacific garrisons at three key points. Saipan, Malolap and Truk. Saipan’s strategic position not only allows it a short sea link to Tinian where we can place additional marines to support a Saipan garrison, but it commands Guam, Iwo Jimi and Wake with its airfield and naval base. These assets we should seek to improve, also constructing coastal defences to allow a small garrison not to be overwhelmed while our marine forces resolve force projection over these islands.

In that sense, I would advocate a mobile defence strategery to the islands of the pacific.

Mazola, might not be Kwajalein in terms of military base potential, but what it is, is central to the local pacific islands. With fairly short distances connecting each of the islands. Therefore we should not see Mazola, Kwajalein, Bikini and the rest as individual islands, but rather as one big island that needs a suitable mobile garrison.

Upgrading the light infrastructure here, with many docks, ferries and light road networks will be key to this strategy. Given that the islands are small, the industrial investment will also be very small. However it will be crucial to enable our marines to rapidly deploy between the islands as they are attacked. To this end keeping their forces pure, and not building static defences, except perhaps at Kwajalein where we should maintain a garrison at the port for supply purposes, will be key.
Yap and Turk (and Palau) are far less strategic in this aspect, while Palau may be useful in an invasion of the Philippines, it serves no other purposes and should, like Iwo Jimi, Wake and Mili be left undefended. Yap and Truck however need to maintain a small garrison, again mobile. But not seek to be overly defended. The strength in the island chains is that they require an amphibious assault. That is difficult, their weakness is supply since an army can use that to hurt the war effort without ever needing to set foot on the island, and troops without supplies can’t fight. Hence there is no point in a garrison.
Since we are keeping our Pacific forces light and mobile, we shall have more assets capable for ambitions in Manchuria, and the South Pacific. The island of Borneo is, and should be Japanese by right. It’s oil will greatly help the nation of Japan, soo long as we can keep the supply ships convoying!

I'm afraid I don't see the point in this???
Garrisons are cheap, they are in position right now, except in the homelands and Asia, we got more MP than we got IC to use and Gars are low officer requirement.
Yes the convoys are threatened, but removing all enemy bases in the interior when at war will then lessens the problem considerable. Fleets on sub patrol can also go where the problem is and deal with it.
When an invasion of one of the islands come our fleet must go there and deal with the attacker, supported by landbased fighters it should not be a big problem.

In terms of budget;
1. Have the infrastructure items placed early January, they will be completed very quickly, and add (a small amount) to construction practical, thus aiding our industrial improvements

2. Then use the same slots for an airfield on Saipan, and possibly a coastal fort. Although this is not of huge important right now.

3. Recombine, our garrisons to the three ‘port islands’ (3 brigades apiece), return any addtional garrisons to Honshu, then redistribute them to other home ports on mainland Japan, Taiwan or Naha

4. Build 2, 4x Marine divisions for Saipan and Malolap when we have the ability to do so
5. Build 2, 3x Marine divisions for Truk, and Kwajalein.

The IJN should be prepared to aid such islands against invasion if and when they occur. Seeking to oust invasion when they take place to deny ports, but not seek to hold out individually.
I hope you IJN Admirals concur with this plan of action, and would support the strategic initive.

I'm looking for what the navy has to say here, as the army generals for once sees something similar.

General Budget
I would seek to support General Surts IC policy, but perhaps rather fewer new factories, instead swapping out a couple of those 8, for infrastructure as part of the PPP, marines being built as and when, in a later build cycle.
I would however seek to see a far lower amount to be spent on the upgrades, instead at a rate to supply 20% of our armed forces for the moment, we have a long time to upgrade them, without immediate need to do so, we can spend subtiatally more to upgrade them nearer the build up to war.

Agreed on keeping dissent low, possibly just above required on consumer goods, also seeking reappointments in the ministry to keep this low. We may want to produce a decent (+5 to +20) supplies surplus, in the medium term, depending on the other production costs, mainly to insure a strong positive trade balance, for which funds can be spend on industrial or research based investment initives, as well as building up a stronger surplus in the warehouses.

Having a new carrier in the dry dock is a good initive to build a strong navy, and support it, and its CAGs construction.
Later we should seek at least 3 new corps worth of pure infantry (12x, 3xINF divisions), built in 3 parallel, 4 serial. This should give us the required manpower for later operations in China.

Should we have spare IC left over here, I ask the naval admirals to put in other requests. Although, let us keep the capitals to 2 at a time, and then stagged builds to make the most of flexibility in the budget, and utilising practical knowledge.

I think we need to see much more concrete build plans and leadership distributions before we can go on.
I will contemplate some budget proposal and then we must come to an agreement before the navy gets all the money.

Any desired amendments or concerns?

I had not foreseen there would be such a difference in the view of the generals of the Imperial Army, it is as if we live in different worlds, while we both seek to improve the standing of the Empire our choice of methods could hardly have been more different.

I thank the generals for their input, but I have different opinions in some matters. The defense of the Home Islands should be under the IJN, with some help from some regular army units if need be. For the Pacific islands, we should plan for an aggressive stance if we want to go with the carrier route. All of our islands with a level 1 naval base should be garrisoned. If anyone fall into enemy hands, it will be used as a jump point toward our great nation. The planned marines should take Taiwan as their HQ (Taiwan should be part of the IJN command).

I'm glad the navy agrees that every harbour should be guarded, such is however army units and at best garrison units of varying sizes. Home land defence is a shared responsibility, the navy tries to keep the enemy away and the army should keep enough troops to kick anyone who tries to get in out again.

For bases:
-Saipan: for home defense; naval and airforce.
-North Palau: Excellent position, close to the Philippines, rich-Indonesia and Australia. We need to expand the naval base there and build an airport as well.
-Kwajalein and Eniwetok: Good forward bases for operations against USA. Air and Naval bases should be expanded as much as possible.

The number proposed by General Gensui Yamamoto for the marines is too large and I would rather have some reserve-CAG's in addition to Nav-bombers. 5 or 6 marines divisions should be enough.

Admiral ROMMEL_HSQ

General Yamamoto's marines seems excessive for the purpose they are made, namely defence, I a time with low budgets i could envision 3x3 mar brigades sail form island to island claiming them from the enemy, biggest problem is producing enough garrisons to fill them.
In larger invasions the marines should spearhead the attack followed by and later replaced by regular army divisions.

I disagree on the size of the marine corps and still think we don't need such a huge amount invested in it. The marines rule should be the storming of strategic islands that can only be attacked from the sea or to establish a bridgehead from which the army can land immediately and take over. Doing multiple landings will mean multiple escorts and thats highly unrecommended since it will divide our fleets in small peaces that can become easy targets. My doctrine call for two strong carrier fleets that should never be split. They also should be responsible for the escort of the landings and provide support. to ensure success.

Admiral ROMMEL_HSQ

Shipping in army forces will take time, time we do not have if we want to make the most of the element of surprise. Hence we need two corps for multiple landings or for one or two landings in force. If the carrier fleets are not sufficient to protect the marines, the battlefleets will help them out in places and provide armed escort and shore bombardment for landing forces as well as protecting the carrier fleets.

Having seen that most of us have put forward our general proposals, it might be wise to see where agreements and disagreements in strategy lie before compromise. That way, we are not compromising strategy, but rather the implementations of said strategy. A cohesive strategy is required to victor here.

I have ranked these into strategic ‘spheres’, in decreasing order of importance/urgency of how we should look to conduct the next year. If I or II are not to be our focus, then we shall need one of you to offer an alternate detailed strategic plan for review.

I.
Our general major strategy should be to seek ‘Great Power’ status (It might be the wrong term but the next international status tier) (100IC 300 brigades* ??) as soon as possible by investment in industry.

I actually might concur that my initial thoughts on general budget may not be ‘sufficient’ to achieve this, we really need a full 6 national industrial plants, and we may have to seek to see only one capital ship in the yearly production queue, rather than the two I might have envisaged. Produce the CAGs for the IJN Soyna(sp?) in serial, than parallel.

Again the rationale for this is strong. It will significantly improve our leadership abilities! And with that we can then use that additional leadership to allow for research programs ‘in the queue’ that General Surt didn’t think added up. Sure even then we appear to have too many line of technology for our researchers, but what I envisage is that some technologies are at the moment ‘advanced enough’ and it is only as we have to keep them up-to-date in future years.

So why I am saying here is the focus, and here is the paths I should like to see followed, that might not nessicarly mean that we need them researched now, but and opportunity within the current year might allow us to research such technologies. If you get my point.

I would strongly support this cause of action.

*already achieved

II.
Are we in agreement, that the focus of the next three years policy should be to; 1.a Support, the Warlord cliques in western China (Yunnan gives us good proximity influence, hence why we need to work on Long Yun, this will make a military alliance possibility with Guangxi, “maybe” or “likely” possible within the next year or a bit, rather than if we only one on Guangxi) 1.b Seek to, and repeatedly envoy Guangxi/Yunnan to sign a military alliance as they become threatened by the Kuomintang, and come to the axis corner.

1.b CLAUSE:
With work, such alliance will become inevitable, however if in the short term our efforts to independently ally with the Chinese Warlord cliques fail, then we shall have to delay our Chinese ambitions, until we have Germany willing to counter-sign and support an invitation into the fold.

2.a Focus, on creating a Casus belli for war in China, by creating a homeland ‘cause for action’ (lower neutrality in Japan, raise threat in the PRC and Republic of China)2.b Focus on policy not to cause undue threat against the ‘Greater Chinese peoples’, (we must not undertake actions or support events that generate threat in Guangxi or Yunnan, only in the PRC and Kumintang), and the Colonial powers of Britain, France and the United States. 3.a Prepare a military strategy for war in China within the next 3 years4. Align with the axis powers

By independently isolating these powers, rather than finding a united China any ‘deficiencies’ in our armed forces will be mitigated by having Gungxi focus fighting a second front with the Kuomintang forces, I have checked with my subordinates in battle planning and strategic exercise, the strain of a two pronged front, coupled with landings at Shanhai, Fuzion(sp?) and Quingdao(sp?) simply stretches the Kuomintang forces too thin, victory surely follows.

However given that we might not know the full strength of the enemy while I can assure you that from my current intell it is a swift victory, if the Chinese have additional unknown about assets, it will be a tougher fight, but I do believe it will still be easier than if we took on a united China.

I strongly support this action.

III.
Are we in agreement to support a ‘not one step backwards’ stance with the Pacific islands? While my fellow Generals and Admirals appear to be in disagreement with me about the vulnerability of supply convoys and the additional costs this will incur to support ‘vast numbers’ of troops on the Pacific islands. I will concede, that it is better to swallow ones pride when outnumbered such.

1. Build or reorganise strategic assets such that all Pacific island ports (including Naha, Taiwan and the Japanese home islands) have a 3xGAR division present.2. Insure that we have the following assets by at least 1940; On this I shall not budge!
-- Build 2, 4x Marine divisions (for Saipan and Malolap when we have the ability to do so)
-- Build 2, 3x Marine divisions (for Truk, and Kwajalein.)
These assets do not need to be recruited now, but certainly in the near future.

The rationale for this is strong, Marine assets can be utilized both aggressively and defensively. While they may not see action in China the technologies developed for them to fight effectively will improve the amphibious warfare skills of all our infantry troops.

Furthermore, should we later find ourselves at war with any of the great powers having the ability to conduct amphibious assaults in more than one location at a time is a major operations bonus.

I will support this strategy, particularly if given marine elements are recruited as and when they can be, by said date.

IV.
On research and budgeting. Should we be on agreement with I. it is my suggestion that we cancel the current cruiser production, as well as one of the CAG wings, continue the production of the current Destroyer and Carrier. When the first CAG wing is finished, we start the next wing (and then possibly another for reserves?), thus CAG construction in serial.

Then we seek to site at least 4 new national industry plants and a couple of airfields/ UPGRADE a couple of ports. Having checked the intelligence, island infrastructure should not be a priority, it’s good enough as is. Then when these are done, in a couple of months, start construction of at least another 2 national industrial plants, if not another 4-6 if we can afford it.

It is highly unlikely we shall need any new industry in future after this. We can then look to improve our armed forces.

20% upgrades is indeed similar to General Surts analysis for IC allocation.

Research:
1. Do we have agreement on;a. IInfantry Small Arms, Defensive & Offensive weapons, as well as light anti-armour weapons to at least a required level to seek to build marinesa.II To push the first 3 as much as possible, only when research becomes inefficient, to use those slots to improve our specialist divisions.

b.I Heavy fighter development, and to keep the ‘fighter stream’ of technology as up-to-date as possible, currently it is, so the 7 slots here will only be required when we start into mid-’37 or 38’. This should include our CAS training.

b.II I suggest pushing for interdiction air doctrine and ‘into combat’ targeting, the low movement speeds, and using the current strength of our air force as ‘air artillery’ will be far more profitable in my opinion than our forces having to horse tow guns through Asia, and mechanisation will cost us too much fuel.
c. Industrial efficiency, and to push this. Seeking mass production after we have established a great power industrial base.

These I defiantly want to see.

d.I Cross Doctrine Light Armour
“Take the Armoured Schwerpunk path for AC and L-Arm bonuses, for the first two levels, then switch to Cavalry Tank, at the 1940(?) level, to gain another L-Arm bonus, don’t bother with any tank techs other than L-Arm, and then focus on armour, and reliability (then gun). Speed isn’t important”

This upgrades all our AC, and L-arm assets, while we have few of the latter now, the bonus to the AC will aid all our current support divisions.

Then in the future, allows us to build strong L-arm to give additional punch against the other great powers. L-arm might not be Germany’s Armour, but we simply do not have that capability.

d.II Grand Battleplan
Again, it makes sense, our support divisions are already full of these assets, we should not ignore the bonuses it will give us.

Massing firepower, while nice in theory I believe will make our support brigade too costly in China, and victory will not be swift at all! It will mean we shall have to airlift fuel oil into the field at huge cost, since the infrastructure is not good enough, nor do we have the oil to maintain, navy, air and large numbers of ground units.

Motorising our support brigades should not be anywhere near our plans, at least not now.

This stance of Grand Planning might look defensive, but a plan can also be offensive .

Apart from generally keeping air up-to-date and in the aforementioned roles, I defer most other technology streams to the Navy, and anybody else with strategic concerns. These doctrines are my preference. I am willing to listen to other argument though...

On another note: Can we not quote massive sections of text, simply referring to sections ideas and plans should suffice, and it allows for clearer more concise reasoning, and in general actually decreases misunderstanding, as context is often lost through quote-comment-quote.

1. Build or reorganise strategic assets such that all Pacific island ports (including Naha, Taiwan and the Japanese home islands) have a 3xGAR division present.2. Insure that we have the following assets by at least 1940; On this I shall not budge!
-- Build 2, 4x Marine divisions (for Saipan and Malolap when we have the ability to do so)
-- Build 2, 3x Marine divisions (for Truk, and Kwajalein.)
These assets do not need to be recruited now, but certainly in the near future.

I would like to remind our dear army general that he is in no position to dictate something clearly a branch of the Imperial Japanese Navy.